STARRY STARRY NIGHT
She switched off the moon.
Plucked out the stars.
A little dog barked
as her scream scrawled:
“This time life has gone...too far.”
She took an overdose of sleeping tablets
in her big bright red car.
The day withers
that was once in bloom.
Petals fall
in an empty room.
The moon wept.
The stars cried.
Life was for living... Life lied.
INTRO TO STARRY STARRY NIGHT
You would have loved Frieda...everyone loved Frieda. Frieda was the most alive.. most charismatic entity that I have ever known. Flaming red hair …crimson lipstick... scarlet dress...red Jag. You couldn’t miss her. She was the life and soul of everything and she desired only one thing: to be dead or as she put it “...not to be alive! ” The only one it seemed who didn’t love Frieda was...Frieda.
She was(as she admitted herself) an expert suicidist but a failure at pulling it off. We used to joke that we would publish a book of her suicide notes. Her last note simply said: “This time Life has gone too f*ing far! ” She never spoke of Death only of Life as if he was this bloke that one could run into on the corner of some little sidewalk café. There would be Life(looking larger than Life) sitting sipping coffee and he’d say to her: “Ah, ma jolie petite fille! Comment ca va? Asseyez vous, sil vous plait...baisez moi! ” And she’d walk up to Life and kick him in the *****!
She often said that if I wrote a poem about her suicide she would come back and haunt me...I hoped I would never have to.
When she was a little girl she was ***** again and again by her Dad and his two mates. This started when she was 7 and stopped suddenly at 13. As a little girl she looked up the word ****** got as far as insect...this horrible thing crawling all over your consciousness that you can’t get away from. She decided to ask next door’s little girls if what was happening to her was...just what happens. In their case it was the same so they decided to go to the girl next door to next door and see if this was so... and sadly it was. It seemed to be just a thing that Daddies do! One more house would have proven this untrue but...
When her Dad entered her and tore her and she screamed...he told her she was a bad girl and that she was disturbing the neighbours. He got her to bite down on the yellow pencil she had been doing her Maths with. All she could remember were splinters of wood and graphite...flakes of yellow paint...blood and spittle. At that moment she switched and created a Frieda to bear this hell and hid her self away inside her head. She had put herself so far away inside her head that...not even she could reach herself.
It was this created persona who went on to be the Frieda that everyone adored and envied. The more successful this persona was the more the real Frieda hated her. The only way to **** this Frieda was to **** the real Frieda.
All her life she claimed she was “me” & “not me! ”
It was the “not me” she would try to ****.
She used to play over and over again the beginning(just the beginning) of VINCENT and with an avid interest in astrology she would consult the stars to see if it was an opportune time to die.
I was going on stage when a stranger came up to me and said: ” You know that red-headed ***** you fancy...well, she’s topped herself...didn’t make it! ” All the time I was performing the poems I was writing STARRY STARRY NIGHT in my head so that at the end I decided to read it in her memory. I was half way through it when a very alive Frieda floated in at the back of the room with a drink in her hand and a *** in the other! I looked as if I had seen a ghost! She toasted me and said in a loud voice: “I told you I’d come back and haunt you! ” Reports of her demise had been a little hasty and she had “made it! ” I was never so glad to see someone!
Originally the last lines of the poem were:
“The moon wept...the stars cried...that she was alone when she died! ”
This was the most terrible aspect of her death for me that someone so alive and had a life full of... people...people...people...should have no one when it came to the end.
She was a dichotomy...full of life yet full of hatred for life. She believed at once that life was for living but also that Life had lied to her. Both beliefs struggled inside her for dominance...sometimes one won... sometimes the other!
Years later she would phone me up at ungodly hours and no matter who I would be with and repeat them with laughter so that I was obliged to change them to the present lines!
This poem is for my friend Frieda wherever she may be.